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The residents of Fort Morgan will now have an opportunity to engage with the city and voice opinions of public concern on Polco, an innovative community engagement platform where residents can directly provide input to the local government decision-making process.

The platform is designed to allow Fort Morgan officials to present questions and background information to citizens in order to generate organized input to inform local policy decisions.

Residents can get started using the platform immediately by going to www.polco.us/fort-morgan. Residents also have the option to download the Polco App which is available on both iTunes and Android. All that is required to create an account is your name, zip code, and email address.

The city of Fort Morgan will post questions directly to residents on Polco’s website and app, where residents answer and comment on the questions. The first set of four questions has already been posted asking for input on the proposal for a charter change and will likely be left up for at least a few weeks. The city is looking to give people time to hear about the new platform and encourages residents to sign up to participate.

On the Fort Morgan Polco page, the city of Fort Morgan stated that they’re “seeking public input on current ideas, initiatives, and issues facing the City using Polco.” Polco calls itself “a team of economists, policy experts, software engineers, and entrepreneurs dedicated to improving the way our political system works.”

Polco is an anonymous and confidential platform that doesn’t show who is voting or making comments. The zip code is needed just to verify if you’re a registered voter in the city of Fort Morgan, and the e-mail address will be used to notify you when new questions are posted on Polco for Fort Morgan.

“There has been a great deal of discussion in the community recently about a citizen proposal to change the city of Fort Morgan’s charter as it pertains to supervision of the police department,” City Clerk John Brennan stated in a news release.

“We looked at a number of public engagement tools, and Polco was by far the best choice for our needs,” said Fort Morgan City Manager Jeff Wells. “It’s clean, simple and easy to use, and will provide the city with great data to help the city council and city staff make the best decisions in the interest of the community.”

The city of Fort Morgan is using Polco as part of its efforts in gathering public opinion regarding the charter change of the police department.

Of those who are in favor of a charter change proposal include Jack Darnell, former mayor of Fort Morgan. “Prior to the 2007 charter change, there were three police chiefs during a fifty-eight year period, versus three chiefs just in the last ten years,” Darnell said.

He is also concerned about the 25 percent police officer turnover over the past year. “This resulted in over 130 years of institutional knowledge lost to the department.” Darnell was the first one to raise the issue of a charter change to the city’s attention at a council meeting last month. “Eventually something is going to happen here and you want the best department you can have,” Darnell said. “Right now, I don’t know if you have that because you lost the institutional knowledge that’s so valuable.”

The proposed charter change would bring the Fort Morgan Police Department back under direct supervision of city council. Since 2007, the police department has been overseen by the Fort Morgan City Manager.

Opposing the charter change include council member Kevin Lindell, who agreed that Fort Morgan residents should be given the right to vote on the issue but raised concern as to how citizens would be able to gain access to information about the effect changing the charter could have. Lindell also stated that council has an obligation to make sure that “sufficient educational information exists for residents if they are going to be asked to vote on such a change.”

Jeff Wells, who manages the department, responded to Darnell’s concerns regarding a high police turnover rate by claiming that the city has long been aware that its police department functions as something of a training ground for new officers. He said that Fort Morgan struggles to retain young officers as they can often stand to make more money at larger departments on the Front Range after spending a year or two serving in Fort Morgan.